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KH: It’s Wednesday, March 27th, 2013. And this is the Energy Education Podcast. I’m Kevin. Following the Fukushima Daiichi accident, Tokyo Electric made estimates of cesium releases. Cesium is one of the most dangerous and long-lived radioactive isotopes that can be released in a nuclear accident. TEPCO’s estimation of the cesium releases were based on the assumption that the radioactivity was filtered out by water. We’ll discuss why cesium release calculations are important and why TEPCO’s incorrect assumptions have led to incorrect personal dose calculations. Today we’re joined by Fairewind’s chief nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, for a technical discussion on the Fukushima cesium releases. Arnie, welcome to the show.

AG: Hi, Kevin. It’s good to be back after a bout with the flu.

KH: Well, about 2 weeks ago, just before you had the flu, you were in New York City for a presentation being put on by Dr. Helen Caldicott. It was the second anniversary of the Fukushimi Daiichi disaster. The event was titled – the event was the Medical & Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

AG: Yeah. It was within a med school in New York City and was also simulcast. So we had an auditorium full of people, 400, 500 people in the auditorium. But more importantly, we had 4,000 people on line watching this thing as it was being live streamed. The experts that the Caldicott Foundation was able to get together were really impressive. They had the former Prime Minister of Japan started the conference off. That’s Naoto Kan. He was in charge of Japan during the accident. And he’s the guy who forced Tokyo Electric to stay on site. I spoke – Dave Lochbaum spoke from Union of Concerned Scientists. And then Akio Matsumura, the former Japanese ambassador. But then a group of scientists spoke extensively. Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina, who specializes in the effect of radiation on animals. Dr. Steve Wing from NC State spoke about the problems in doing dose assessments the way the Japanese were trying to do them. On and on and on, there was a list of heavy hitters that are recorded and all of them are available on line.

KH: So Arnie, today on the Fairewinds website, we’re publishing your presentation in video format. Any of our viewers can go on the website, download the video and actually watch the Powerpoint presentation next to it. Can you talk a little bit about your presentation?

AG: Yeah. If you were to watch what’s on the Caldicott Foundation website, all they have is the slides and my voice somewhere in the background. What you were able to do is really cool. You’ve got the camera that was trained on me so I’m on half of the video presentation, and the other half is the slides. And we’ve been able to synchronize them so that they work. So it makes a little more sense if you haven’t gone through them already. It’s a really important presentation and they held me to half an hour, which was tough. But there’s a lot of new information about the consequences of this accident to the Japanese that I don’t believe have been out there in – certainly not mainstream media. I don’t believe any media is aware of the information that I was trying to put out there.

KH: Well, given all the time in the world, how long would your presentation really be?

AG: Oh, I could have easily taken another 20 minutes.

KH: So Arnie, I’ve obviously watched the presentation. And I know that there’s one slide that you – one Powerpoint slide that you really want to focus on. Slide 67. What is on slide 67?

AG: Well, that’s I think the most important new information to come out of the entire conference. And it revolves around the issue of how much cesium was released from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. The nuclear industry wants everybody to believe that all the water inside the containment absorbed all that cesium, but slide 67 clearly shows that that couldn’t have happened. It’s a really blurry shot and it’s an infrared photograph looking down on Fukushima unit 3. And there’s a big spot on the corner that shows the fuel pool. That’s not where the action is. The action is a little spot more toward the center of the photograph. And that spot is 128 degrees centigrade. That’s above the boiling point of water. So I’ve got to get into a little bit about boiling water here to make this really understandable. The Tokyo Electric and the present Japanese government and the entire nuclear community are trying to say that only 1 percent of all the cesium that could have gotten out, did get out. And the secret is in the assumptions that they’re using right there. Cesium is the nastiest of the elements that was released – not the only one, but the nastiest. And it’s of course what I detected on the ground in Tokyo and what people have found all over the world now. It’s the most pervasive element. And I think perhaps as much as 10 to 20 percent of the cesium was released. And I’ve got the proof.

KH: So you have a disagreement with TEPCO about just how much cesium was released.

AG: Yes. Absolutely. And it ties right back into public health and what was the exposure to the people in Japan and how many people are going to die.

KH: What argument is TEPCO using to justify their cesium release figures?

AG: Well, there’s a lot of old scientific evidence that shows that if you take hot cesium gases and you bubble them through steam, only 1 percent of the cesium will get out. It’s essentially scrubbed. We call that a DF – a decontamination factor of 100. So Tokyo Electric is hiding behind all this old science that talks about well, when you release radioactive cesium into water, the water traps it and therefore, the people in the surroundings were safe and it really didn’t matter that the containment was leaking.

KH: So Tokyo Electric is arguing that the containment was submerged in water when the accident happened.

AG: Yes. Tokyo Electric believes that there was always water inside the containment. But slide 67 shows that that can’t happen. And it’s not a matter of opinion. It’s raw science here.

KH: Why can’t it happen?

AG: Well if you take a frying pan and heat it up and watch the little bubbles on the bottom of the pan, that’s called nucleate boiling. And then when the bubbles get bigger, that’s called departure from nucleate boiling. And then when the whole pan starts just violently bubbling, that’s called bulk boiling. But all of them occur when the water is 212, at boiling. And water can’t get over 212 on this planet unless you have extraordinary pressures on it. So if you have a boiling hot frying pan that’s red hot and you pour water on it, the water is only going to get to 212 before it flashes to steam. And that’s where slide 67 comes in. 212 is the same as 100 centigrade. Well, slide 67 shows this thermal flare right where the containment should be, and it’s releasing gases at 128 degrees centigrade. That means that can’t be steam squirting out that hole because if it was steam, it would be at 100 degrees centigrade. The extra heat means that it’s hot, radioactive cesium gas squirting out directly from the containment 9 days after the accident.

KH: So you’ve been saying water boils at 212, but that is 100 degrees centigrade, just to be clear.

AG: Yes, correct.

KH: So water boils at 100 degrees centigrade. Water can’t exist as steam at anything above that. And you’re saying that the TEPCO data shows that the temperature of the gases escaping the containment were in fact above that.

AG: Right. And now what that means is that there could be no liquid water inside the containment. When there’s no liquid water inside the containment, there’s no capture of the cesium. So whatever cesium was inside that containment was leaking out of the containment. There’s another slide in the presentation that says that TEPCO estimates the containment leak rate was 300 percent a day. So whatever radioactive gases were inside that containment, every 8 hours were being released out that thermal flare. Well, that changes the game dramatically. Instead of 1 percent of the cesium, it’s likely that 20 or 30 percent of the cesium were released. And at that point, that’s very similar to what we say at Chernobyl. So I’ve been saying that the Fukushima Daiichi accident was very comparable to the Chernobyl accident. In fact, we know for sure the noble gases were 3 times higher at Fukushima than they were at Chernobyl. That’s covered extensively in my talk and I don’t have to go there today. But the Japanese didn’t measure that and it blew away. So they’re not worried about that exposure to their people. They’re looking at the cesium now and trying to claim that only 1 percent of the cesium got out because that’s what the old tests showed. Well, the old tests showed – don’t match this slide 67, the infrared picture. And the infrared picture shows hot, radioactive gases being released directly out into the atmosphere 9 days after the atmosphere. It’s a really important discovery and I hope that people doing dose assessments will understand that they’re not dealing with a reactor containment that had water in it. They’re dealing with a reactor containment that had hot gas in it.

KH: So Arnie, this is all about steam bubbles. And you’re an expert, I understand, in steam bubbles.

AG: Well, when you’re a nuclear engineer, you have to take a course in steam bubbles. Yeah, I took a 3-credit course watching steam bubble – the nucleate boiling departure from nucleate boiling and bulk boiling are driven into my thick skull. The other thing I could bore you to death about is cooling power plumes. That was my masters thesis.

KH: So you know when and where steam can and can’t exist basically.

AG: That’s right. So we are not talking about an area that can be in scientific dispute. This is raw physics. This is the stuff they teach kids in freshman and sophomore physics in college. And water doesn’t exist over 100 degrees centigrade – 212 Fahrenheit. And yet that picture that we’re bringing up on slide 67 clearly shows something hot is leaking out of that containment. This is hot, radioactive cesium gas.

KH: But TEPCO is making the argument that the water that was in and around the reactor filtered out the cesium.

AG: That’s right. And they’re arguing, too, that everything you see coming off the top of that nuclear reactor was steam. It can’t be steam and it had to be cesium.

KH: So we’re talking about the percentage, the amount of cesium that escaped the reactor. Of course, you have a different opinion than TEPCO, but in the end, if you’re right, what does that mean to the people? What kind of difference in dose can the people of Japan expect?

AG: Yeah. I can understand where the average Japanese doesn’t care what the decontamination factor was, but he very much cares what the exposure was to his son or daughter. So what this means is that the cesium dose that the IAEA – the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Japanese government is calculating, is way low. We had a call last – a couple of weeks ago, from a scientist who talked about his work with Japanese scientists and they were deliberately under calculating the amount of radiation that they were measuring tenfold. His instrument was reading ten times higher than the guy standing right next to him. And when he caught them at it, they said they had a loose wire. Well, they didn’t have a loose wire. It’s systemic within the Japanese nuclear establishment right now that they’re underestimating dose. And when you underestimate what you measure, you need the theoretical foundation to support that. And the Japanese, in order to do that, needed to say well, all the cesium’s inside that nuclear reactor – only 1 percent leaked out. In fact, much more leaked out. And I think my leak rate and the amount of cesium that is in that leak rate match up a lot better with the exposures that the people in Japan really got. You know, the IAEA says 100 people are going to die from this. Well, I think it’s going to be a thousand times higher than that. And the difference is in the assumptions. And I think my assumptions are supported a lot more by the data from the field than the IAEA’s, hiding behind some old studies.

KH: Arnie, my favorite slide is slide #75 on the presentation, a picture of Tokyo. Tell me about that. Why is that in there?

AG: Yeah. It’s a glorious picture of Tokyo at night. And over to the right, by the way, is the Tokyo Electric tower. We won’t go there. It’s a beautiful photograph, first off. But secondly, it shows the vibrancy of Tokyo city. Tokyo city, including the greater metropolitan area, is 35 million people. And here’s Naoto Kan at the beginning of the conference saying that the existence of Japan as a sovereign nation was jeopardized. Well, my point in this entire presentation is at some point the risks of a technology become untenable. And I think that’s what the Daiichi accident showed us. If the next time we risk another city the size of Tokyo, sooner or later you’re going to roll snake eyes here. And if we just missed it with Fukushima Daiichi, there’ll be another one coming unless we change horses.

KH: Arnie Gundersen, thanks for joining.

AG: Oh, thanks for having me, Kevin.

KH: Well, that does it for this week’s show. You can catch us back here next Wednesday and every Wednesday for more technical discussion on what’s happening in the world of nuclear news. Also, don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For Fairewinds Energy Education, I’m Kevin. Thanks for listening